Fundamental Attribution Error

[Señor Popcorn]

Quote from the article: "the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or overattribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing situational explanations. In other words, people have an unjustified tendency to assume that a person's actions depend on what 'kind' of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces that influence the person. Overattribution is less likely, perhaps even inverted, when people explain their own behavior; this discrepancy is called the actor-observer bias."

[Kris Krieger]

Señor Popcorn-Coconut wrote in news:f0kfi2$cva$1 @aioe.org:

Simple - Lack of logic/rationality. People who are both primarily emotion- driven, and immature, strongly tend towards perceiving the unverse and its denizens as reflections of their own inner world. IOW, projection. It's like what our grandmothers used to tell us: Liars and theives typically assume that there are no honest people, Bullies have a need to feel powerful because they are insecure and fearful. And so on.

It's just that our grandmothers used slear, simple language, rather than polysyllabic terminology and overly complex grammatical constructs.

- Kris

[Señor Popcorn]

Psychology's one of most readable of the disciplines-- scientific or otherwise. Often, so-called simple language or, as you say, terminology (5 syllables) requires complex elaborations to be understood.

While practically any human endeavor can become quite complex, the 'fundamental attribution error' seems pretty tight, concise and understandable if you ask me, especially for what it does and describes.

When all your grandmothers get together and create a sufficient body of research that conforms to some important scientific principles, minus the "overly complex grammatical constructs" I'll be all ears. :) One grandmother I know used to think that being gay was "unnatural".

"Whatever definition is considered apt, identifying particular items of knowledge that are 'common sense' is more difficult. Philosophers may choose to avoid using the phrase where precise language is required."

-- Wikipedia, on Common Sense